Museum In Baltimore

An article in Wednesday's editions of The Sun about plans for a children's museum in Baltimore incorrectly reported Anthony W. Deering's title. He is the president and chief executive officer of the Rouse Co. Mathias J. DeVito is chairman.The Sun regrets the error.

T he Coming Storm is going away for awhile. So is The Goose Girl. And one of Alfred Sisley's Impressionist paintings. Maryland's temporary loss will be Tennessee's and Pennsylvania's gain, when 32 paintings from the 19th century leave the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore next month to go on the road for nearly a year as a traveling exhibit titled The Road to Impressionism: Barbizon Landscapes from the Walters Art Museum. Directors announced this month that the museum will close its 19th-century galleries from Aug. 18 to Oct. 10 so many of the paintings now on display there can be prepared for the tour.

Brenda Bodian of Stoneleigh and Antonio Consolandi of Milan, Italy, were married October 27, 2007 at the Frederick Douglass-Isaac Myers Maritime Museum in Baltimore, Maryland. Brenda is the daughter of Elinor Bodian of Baltimore and the late David Bodian. Antonio is the son of the late Angelo and Lina Consolandi of Soncino, Italy. Brenda is President of BJB Realty Advisors of Baltimore; and Antonio is developing residential real estate in Italy. They will reside in Baltimore and Milan.

Brenda Bodian of Stoneleigh and Antonio Consolandi of Milan, Italy, were married October 27, 2007 at the Frederick Douglass-Isaac Myers Maritime Museum in Baltimore, Maryland. Brenda is the daughter of Elinor Bodian of Baltimore and the late David Bodian. Antonio is the son of the late Angelo and Lina Consolandi of Soncino, Italy. Brenda is President of BJB Realty Advisors of Baltimore; and Antonio is developing residential real estate in Italy. They will reside in Baltimore and Milan.

The Westminster Common Council has awarded an $88,046 contract to a Howard County company to renovate a city maintenance shop on Old Manchester Road.Baltimore-Washington Restoration Co. Inc. will do exterior work on the 2 1/2 -story building, which was used for several years to store road salt. Construction is expected to begin next month and take about four months to complete."The company will be installing three roll-up doors, fixing some windows and closing others," said Thomas B. Beyard, city director of planning and public works.

Emmett Howard Allen Sr., a retired machinist who spent his later years helping rebuild trains at the B&O Railroad Museum in Baltimore, died of heart and lung conditions Wednesday in his Northeast Baltimore home. He was 85. Mr. Allen was born and raised in West Baltimore, served in the Army and retired from Westinghouse Electric Co., where he worked as a machinist in its Linthicum plant. From his first marriage, which ended in divorce, Mr. Allen had two children who survive him: Emmett Allen Jr. and Linda Allen, both of North Carolina.

After a decade of hard work, not even Saturday night's windy, rainy, snowy weather could dampen the spirits of Rebecca Hoffberger, the founder of the American Visionary Art Museum.More than 600 people braved the elements to be among the first to see her $7 million dream at 800 Key Highway. The party was a gala fund-raiser that attracted well-heeled guests who paid $250 for dinner at Southern High School followed by a preview, and others, who paid $500 to $1,000 for a VIP preview before dinner.

Several hundred supporters of Banneker-Douglass Museum in Annapolis are planning a prayer vigil Monday night to thwart what they see as an attempt to close one of the state's major repositories of black culture.The vigil at Lawyers Mall in front of the State House comes on the heels of last week's firing of Ronald L. Sharps, the museum's executive director. Sharps' supporters called the termination a "slap in the face" and a step toward closing the museum.Officials at the Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development, which oversees the museum, said Sharps was terminated because of "a record of disagreement over issues of management of the museum."

When commercial shuttle boats extend their regular service to the Baltimore Museum of Industry this summer, this institution near Locust Point becomes part of the Inner Harbor's attractions. It is about time. In the past 17 years, the museum has grown from a desk at City Hall to a most intriguing collection of Baltimore nostalgia."We have one of the largest educational programs of any museum in Baltimore," Dennis Zembala, the museum's director, remarked recently as a dozen school children were hard at work in a play cannery, shucking oysters and trying to relive a typical Baltimore industrial experience of some hundred years ago.A total of 40,000 pupils are expected to visit the Key Highway museum this year.

Mission: To stimulate an interest in African-American history by revealing the often-neglected facts of history; to use great leaders as role models to motivate youth; to improve race relations by dispelling myths of racial inferiority; and to support and work in conjunction with other nonprofit, charitable organizations seeking to improve the social and economic status of African-Americans. The museum - the first wax museum in Baltimore and the first in the nation dedicated to African-Americans - was established in 1983 by Drs. Elmer and Joanne Martin.

As the first visitors were arriving at the B&O Railroad Museum's Ellicott City Station to see its annual holiday train display, Tom Sellars was reaching over the clear plastic wall with a yardstick, pulling a few wispy strings of dried glue off the plastic trees. "He's a fanatic for details," said Tony Zingarelli, who, with Sellars and Larry Harrington, spent a combined 750 hours building the display's tunnels, towns and tracks from scratch. The details -- from the blue light at the end of a tiny worker's blowtorch to a wire fence tied by hand onto several dozen posts -- require a lot of meticulous work, but model train buffs are eager to put their imagination to the test this holiday season.

A column in the Maryland section on July 25 stated that the American Dime Museum in Baltimore had closed because of financial difficulties. The museum closed, but subsequently reopened by appointment or reservation. Not to be alarmist or anything - oh, what the heck, this is no time to mince words: Baltimore is losing its weirdness. It is escaping town and migrating to Washington, of all places. The first sign something was amiss came last month when D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams was photographed cannonballing into a swimming pool to promote the city's summer programs.

Emmett Howard Allen Sr., a retired machinist who spent his later years helping rebuild trains at the B&O Railroad Museum in Baltimore, died of heart and lung conditions Wednesday in his Northeast Baltimore home. He was 85. Mr. Allen was born and raised in West Baltimore, served in the Army and retired from Westinghouse Electric Co., where he worked as a machinist in its Linthicum plant. From his first marriage, which ended in divorce, Mr. Allen had two children who survive him: Emmett Allen Jr. and Linda Allen, both of North Carolina.

Johnny Unitas has donated his personal collection of football memorabilia to the Babe Ruth Birthplace and Museum in Baltimore, forging a partnership between two of the city's greatest sports treasures. The Baltimore Colts legend and museum officials made the announcement at the museum during a news conference yesterday. "I think this stuff should be here," Unitas said. "This is where I played all these years. The people of Baltimore have always been very gracious to me." Museum officials are hoping that the addition of the Unitas collection will accelerate the museum's plan to extend into Camden Station, a now empty building located next to Oriole Park at Camden Yards.

As Time magazine was saying recently: We Like to Watch. The reference was to voyeuristic television featuring "real" people in "real" behavior -- a new thing under the sun or a truth old enough to have come from Daniel Lambert, who happens to be dead nearly 200 years. Lambert has recently arrived in effigy at the American Dime Museum in Baltimore. Find him in life-size representation dressed in vest, waistcoat and knickers and perched on a settee on the lower level of the museum. On loan from the Maryland Historical Society, it's a cloth and foam rubber reproduction of a wax figure, the kind of figure that marched on after Lambert died, spreading his fame outside England to the world.

AFTER SPENDING more than a year developing a design for the Maryland Museum of African-American History and Culture in downtown Baltimore, sponsors of the $26 million project are going back to the drawing board. Maryland's Department of General Services has terminated the contract of the original architects and exhibit designer so that another team can be selected to complete the project. Nikki Smith, administrator of the state's African-American Initiative program and liaison to a citizens group that is overseeing planning for the museum, said officials hope to interview candidates in the next week or so and select a new architect by March.

The Walters Art Gallery will be one of five U.S. stops for the first touring exhibition of rare angel artfrom the collections of the Vatican Museum.Sponsored by the Chrysler Corporation, "The Invisible Made Visible: Angels from the Vatican," will be on view at the Walters Nov. 8, 1998, through Jan. 3, 1999. It includes more than 100 paintings, sculptures, artifacts, ceramics and other works shown together for the first time.In the exhibition are angels as envisioned by Raphael, Reni, Fra Angelico, Salvador Dali and other renowned artists.

Johnny Unitas has donated his personal collection of football memorabilia to the Babe Ruth Birthplace and Museum in Baltimore, forging a partnership between two of the city's greatest sports treasures. The Baltimore Colts legend and museum officials made the announcement at the museum during a news conference yesterday. "I think this stuff should be here," Unitas said. "This is where I played all these years. The people of Baltimore have always been very gracious to me." Museum officials are hoping that the addition of the Unitas collection will accelerate the museum's plan to extend into Camden Station, a now empty building located next to Oriole Park at Camden Yards.

New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani certainly has kicked up a firestorm of controversy with his declaration that the Brooklyn Museum of Art's current exhibition, "Sensation: Young British Artists from the Saatchi Collection," is "sick stuff," and that a multimillion-dollar subsidy to the museum will be withheld.In 1955, Baltimore Mayor Thomas J. D'Alesandro Jr. was both praised and denounced by critics after he ordered local artist Glenn F. Walker's painting, "In a Room," which showed a nude man and woman lying on a bed, removed from the Peale Museum's "Life in Baltimore exhibit."

Explanation needed of plans to build black history museumThe article "Museum of black history gets boost" (Jan. 31), detailing plans for the new black history museum in Baltimore was, I believe, a shock to some of Maryland's taxpayers. I wholeheartedly support the arts and humanities efforts in our great state and, especially, in Baltimore. But I question the decision to allot $15 million to another effort at a historical museum downtown when the city government was so quick to admit defeat with the former City Life Museums.